Precious Treasure
by Laughingly The Lark
Summary: Snooping around Lex's penthouse can reveal all different kinds of treasures.


The inner sanctum.

The room that all reporters would kill to see, not to mention a large portion of the female population.

**Lex Luthor's private bedroom. **

From the silk sheets of the bed to the high-tech gismos on the desk, the room oozed with mystery and excitement. She crept quietly across the floor, feeling the lush carpet underfoot.

Finally the jackpot was struck as she found the opening with the control for a secret compartment by pressing on a part of the bed. Triumph welled deep inside of her, she had broken him. She was the great discoverer of Lex Luthor's most secret treasures.

Now to figure out the password… It would be something significant to this safe and meanings of the things within it… Something private and personal. This was his private room, more secure than half the most secret government bases; yet too obvious to keep anything Superman might look for. Absolutely no one was allowed into this bedroom, not the many women, not the faithful minions, the personal employees, not the servants, or even the bodyguards. Only one lone housekeeper, with higher clearance than Mercy and even more loyalty, was allowed in to clean and that was it.

Hmmm…. His sense of the ironic the symbolic would shine through into even the password. She had three tries before there would likely be an alarm going off. _Hmmm, Something that matters to him._ Here goes…

LILLIAN: "Error!"

MOTHER: "Error!"

She paused. Last try….

CHLOE………

The compartment slid open revealing its sacred treasure to her eyes….

A single plain photograph. Green eyes stared up at her from the laughing visage of a young blonde. The same green eyes looked solemnly back. Hands almost shaking, she slowly picked up the photo. As if in a daze she walks to the purple silk bed and softly sits down, never once looking up from the worn photograph in her hands.

The edges are mussed and no longer smooth… It must have taken a lot of handling to bring the photograph to this state. Especially for him. He _never_ likes things to be out of place or less than perfect looking. But this… This has fingerprints on the edges, wearing the picture off slightly there. No matter how carefully he has handed it you can see the hours of time spent simply gazing at it, they are etched into the photograph now, showing him as clearly as if he too were captured by the camera's flash. She notices somewhere in the back of her mind that tears are running silently down her face, but hardly notices in the flood of love and obsession flowing over her.

Finally she speaks, a faint whisper, as if to reassure and convince the ghosts of the past whirling around her. "She'll come back… She always does. No matter what he does, no matter how corrupted he becomes, she always comes back eventually."

Time has set still. All that remains is memories and whispers… Memories and Truth and Love. They surround her like and ocean pulling her in until she wants to drown… Finally she lays her head down and lets them lull her to sleep as they surround her in a tight blanket, easing her tears and giving her dreams of the future.

He was exhausted. Meetings all day with politicians to businessmen, to LuthorCorp employees to covert scientists on his payroll, and yet all of them managed to make the pressure between his eyes worsen with their incompetence. Could no one do what they were supposed to anymore? Manage their own tasks with something resembling initiative and imagination? He lolled is head back, urging the muscles in his shoulders ease their tension.

His only wish, as he opened the door to his bedroom, was for a goodnights sleep before dealing with the idiots all over again tomorrow. Blast Superman! He would have been able to work out the kinks and have them all doing exactly as he said if it weren't for the Big Dumb Alien and his incessant meddling…

Suddenly he realized what was out of place in his bedroom.

His right eyebrow arched up. Apparently the security and passwords for his room need updating if a five year old child could access his treasure trove. No, not _a_ child, _his_ child, there was a difference. No other child would have the intelligence and ingenuity to open his secret compartment and figure out the password. Although the compulsion to sneak into his rooms and ferret out his secrets was most definitely a trait inherited from other genes than his.

He carefully took the photograph from her limp hand and placed it back into its compartment, double checking that the ring, the lock of hair, and other random mementos were still safely nestled in the very back of the drawer. Closing the compartment he contemplated his intruder. He really should be furious at her for invading his most private memories, but she was too much her mother's child. And too much, he admitted to himself, the greatest of his treasures. She was the centerpiece of his Chloe Collection, the baby princess to his ruler of the world, and the largest piece of Chloe her ever stole from her to hoard and remember.

He picked her up and tucked her into the bed. He would let her sleep in with him rather than moving her. It wouldn't be the first time giving against his instincts and let her have a piece of him he preferred hidden away. His other children he could manage, control, mold, but this one…this child did what no other being on the planet had ever accomplished. She had Lex Luthor rapped around her finger.

"Goodnight, Little One."

Striping to boxers he moved to turn out the light.

"Goodnight, Miss Sullivan." _Goodnight my love._

End.


End file.
